Fat Girl Limbo: Inspired by the movie Beerfest

*I wrote this and posted it on a dating site I happen to belong to called, OKCupid. Someday I'll talk more in detail about that whole decision process. That day is not today, but in the meantime....

On St. Patrick’s Day, I watched the film Beerfest for the first time. I have to say it was entertainingly apropos to say the least. Although I had about 5 beers in me by the time the movie started, I find that even drunk I can’t stop my brain from analyzing whatever sort of information I happen to be feeding it. In this case, there was a particular scene that piqued my psychoanalytical interest. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’ll try not to give much away (although, if I just say, “beer, tits, and fake Germans” that pretty much gives the whole movie away). Mo’Nique played a side character in this film, and during a scene in which one of the main characters is completely sodding drunk, she ends up having sex with him. The joke of the scene is that because he is so drunk, his perception of her appears to be dramatically altered. Instead of seeing the actual Mo’Nique, through his vision we see a slender, exotic looking woman with an obviously (literally) doctored body and gorgeous facial features.

Now, Mo’Nique is, by no stretch of the imagination, considered the type one would generally want to see in a swimsuit competition. However, despite her robust figure, she is a very lovely woman. Yes, yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but I think it can be agreed upon across the board that she is not difficult to look at. In fact, one might go so far as to say that the only thing preventing her from being considered outright beautiful is her weight.

Regardless of what culture you belong to, no one is completely blind to body size. In many tribal communities, being overweight was/is considered a representation of your wealth and status, and is actually a trait that is thought of as very attractive. In many more modern cultures, including our own, being overweight tends to have the exact opposite effect. Although these two viewpoints are extremely diverse, they are two sides of the same coin. Both perspectives on weight and its attractive qualities have to do with the long term biological goal of offspring, and furthering our genetic lines. If weight gain is seen as a representation of wealth, it becomes an attractive quality in a mate because that means they have the ability to provide a stable environment for offspring. In first world countries, if a person is overweight/obese, it inspires the thought that they do not take care of their own health, or possess less than desirable genetic traits that are expressed in their body size. (On a side note, it could also be argued that since unhealthy food tends to be the fastest, easiest, and cheapest in our society, being overweight can be symbolic of your financial status as well. There is a reason that the lower-middle class is demographically the most obese.)

So tonight, with my brain still contemplating the comedic, but culturally interesting scene, I decided to do a bit of research on good ol’ OKCupid. I searched “BBW” (an acronym for ‘big beautiful woman’, which I believe had its conception in pornography), curious to see what kind of profiles utilized this phrase. Many women came up as options, all of them large, and all of them using the phrase quite openly. The favorite sentence seemed to be, “I’m a BBW, and I’m proud of it!” Men appeared in the search listings as well, but they had a sort of binary diversity to them regarding their utilization of the term. Either they loved it, explicitly saying that they preferred a woman such as this, or they warned away anyone who fell into the category completely.

Now it cannot be argued that, although we have a few good options, the body descriptors for this dating site are ambiguous at best. This is all due to semantics, and it is proven by the fact that many of the women who identified themselves as BBW’s, also described themselves as ‘curvy’, the same body descriptor I used on my own profile. It has never been more clear to me that despite living in a culture that puts a high value on labels, our linguistic system occasionally sucks ass.

With all due self-confidence, I can still say with certainty that my body is far from perfect, and while I definitely don’t feel justified in describing myself as a BBW, I cannot describe myself as fit or skinny. This is what it means to be in Fat Girl Limbo; small enough that you can still fit in mall clothes, but large enough that you share dating site body descriptors with BBW’s. Perhaps worst of all, is that it could be argued that regardless of which direction we Limbo girls go, someone is lowering their standards for us. It is either, “I prefer large women, but I suppose you’ll do,” or, “I prefer slender women, but I suppose you’ll do.” With this sort of (hopefully unspoken) flattery, it is little wonder that so many women find comfort in cheesecake, or seek validation by sticking a toothbrush down their throat.

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here” indeed.